I would like to hear what our taxpayers think about a number of local issues, such as council cuts, anti-social behaviour, litter and speeding . If you would to contribute please complete this very short survey. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/W9BPV3P
I would also like to hear from residents about their views on refuse and recycling in South Holland. Please complete this very brief survey to make your views known to me. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WCVNXQV
Thank you in advance for taking the time to let me know how you feel about local issues. All information will be treated in confidence. If I get a meaningful number of responses, I will publish the results. Please respond by no later than 1st August 2012.
Roger Gambba-Jones 
Hi Roger
Good survey. I didn’t take it because I no longer live in South Holland but I have some views nevertheless.
I have worked in waste management and specifically municipal waste collection for twenty-five years and have been involved with and witnessed refuse collection all over the country. I remain convinced that South Holland has the most efficient service possible with good managers and excellent crews who have consistently delivered service improvements and economies year after year.
The issue of weekly collections is a tough one for SH because of the insistence on retaining a black bag collection. Fortnightly collections under these circumstances would be near impossible but if you were to consider the introduction of wheeled bins then this would almost certainly increase your costs significantly due to increased capital financing costs of the bins, new vehicles and bin lift mechanisms. There may also be increased revenue costs associated with vehicle maintenance, reduced capacity of the vehicles and the possible requirement for additional crews. Remember – fortnightly collections does not mean halving the costs because there is still as much rubbish to collect whether you do it weekly or fortnightly and give people a wheel bin and they will produce more.
If I lived in South Holland and you didn’t provide me with recycling bags then I would still recycle but I expect a lot of other people would stop so I recommend that you continue to provide them. Alternatively I would look at black bags, households have to put their rubbish in something and if the council stopped providing them then they would have to buy their own from the supermarket – they are quite cheap. Stopping black bags would cause a lot of fuss but people would soon get over it!
As regards green waste – I think it is a waste of money, of course people like it (I am currently working on an implementation project at Boston) and it is almost certain that it will lead to increased costs eventually. It’s just a service that you don’t have to provide so why do it? – I’d rather like council to come round and sweep my drive once a week but I don’t think the will do that either!
I hope my thoughts are in some way helpful.
Good luck
Andrew
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Thanks Andrew – very useful feedback resident or not. All the question are based on my kite flying and not an indicator of policy direction at SHDC. Given the continued pressure on our budgets, we think they are going to hit us with another 10% next time, we will be asking this type of question at some point if only to justify continuing to do what we do. Thanks again
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